An innovative lawsuit in Quebec offers an intriguing
model for reforming the substandard secular education provided in many
Hasidic communities.
For years it’s been well known that many Hasidic
yeshivas in New York fall far short of the state’s education department
requirement that private school curricula be “substantially equivalent”
to those in public schools. As reported
in The New York Times last year, many Hasidic elementary school
students receive only 90 minutes of math and English education each day,
in contrast with seven and a half hours of religious education.
Such practices, the Times observed, have been going on for decades.
Lately the abuses have become even more egregious. In
the East Ramapo school district, Hasidim form a supermajority of the
school board, a position they have shamelessly used to their advantage.
Public school budgets have been slashed, public school land has been
sold at fire sale prices to Hasidic yeshivas, and funds have been
diverted to religious schools, at the expense of everyone else.
Why has nothing been done?
Simple: politics.
Hasidim vote, and they vote as blocs — both out of
sincere obedience to their rebbes and with the understanding that
divergence from the party line will be punished severely. As a result,
Hasidic hierarchies can deliver thousands of votes to politicians. They
can make or break political careers. And so no one takes them on.
That’s where the Quebec lawsuit comes in.
Yohanan Lowen was educated in the reclusive Tash
enclave in Boisbriand, north of Montreal. Like similar communities in
New Square and Monsey, New York, Boisbriand is a world unto itself. The
Hasidic power structure controls everything and enforces its own rules.
One can live in Boisbriand and never encounter a non-Hasid, let alone a
non-Jew.
Lowen, represented by the not-for-profit Clinique Juridique Juripop, alleges
that he was deprived of his right to a secular education. And he’s
suing not just the yeshivas that left him functionally illiterate, but
also the Quebec government and other public agencies that knowingly
allowed this illegal activity to continue.
Now 37 and the father of four, Lowen says he’s unable
to hold down meaningful employment; he currently teaches Talmud part
time at a liberal synagogue and is on the dole.
Although Lowen’s claims may seem trumped-up for his
lawsuit — he is seeking $1.25 million in damages — I have met many
people with similar stories. They struggle to emerge out of
fundamentalist ghettos, receive almost no support from the mainstream
Jewish community, and often have to start from scratch as adults,
learning English (or, in Israel, modern Hebrew) and basic life skills.
Many find their way, but many others are lost souls, abandoned by their
families and by the wider Jewish community.
There are points of light in this darkness of
coercion and ignorance: small organizations like Footsteps (in the
United States) and Hillel (in Israel); stirring narratives published in
these pages by Frimet Goldberger and others; and stories of those who
have thrived outside the ghetto walls.
But the collusion among Hasidic leadership, Jewish
powerbrokers, politicians and the mainstream Jewish community has failed
thousands of individuals trapped inside lives they do not wish to lead,
but cannot leave, for fear of poverty and isolation.
Lowen says that many Hasidic parents have sent him
secret letters (and checks) of support from around the world. They want
the change he is seeking, but would risk excommunication if they tried
to bring it about.
We need an American Yohanan Lowen. There have been
courageous ex-Hasidim who have pushed for reform. Naftuli Moster,
profiled in the Times, is one of them. He has written to the Board of
Regents, met with school superintendents, talked to officials in Albany
and even sponsored a billboard along the Prospect Expressway to persuade
Hasidim to educate their children.
So far, he’s been stonewalled. Amazingly, rather than
launch its own investigation, the city’s education department has
demanded that Moster investigate his own allegations. The city and the
state are passing the buck back and forth.
And don’t expect New York’s progressive mayor to do anything about it. In the last election, Bill de Blasio had the support
of half the Satmar community and many leaders of Agudath Israel of
America. He’s not going to challenge a critical part of his own base. On
the contrary, he’s tried to pour even more money into the yeshiva
system via the city’s universal pre-K program — although these efforts
have so far foundered on constitutional grounds.
The efforts of reformers like Moster are noble, but
unlikely to succeed. The only way politicians will challenge the Hasidic
power elite is if they are forced to do so.
A lawsuit such as Lowen’s should not be understood as
anti-religious or anti-Hasidic. As long as it is voluntarily chosen,
the Hasidic way may be beautiful and profound. On the contrary, it is
the UJA-Federation of New York, the city government and the state
education department that are short-changing thousands of Hasidic
children, abandoning them to an insular power elite. How exactly is the
federation serving the needs of this growing segment of the New York
Jewish population by allowing its leaders to starve it of knowledge,
education and power?
As many have said before me, such negligence is a chillul Hashem,
a profanation of the divine name. But the secular system, too, has
failed. Not only have we failed to fight this coercion, we also have aided and abetted it.
Who will take up the charge, then, to fight this
injustice in the courts? Who will step forward to be the American
Yohanan Lowen?
Jay Michaelson is a contributing editor to the Forward.
One of the first patients
I had to see as a pediatrician was Sol,a beautiful month-old babywho was admitted with signs
of a severe respiratory infection.Until then, I had never seen
a patient worsen so fast.In just two days
she was connected to a respiratorand on the third day she died.Sol had whooping cough.After discussing the case in the room
and after a quite distressing catharsis,I remember my chief resident said to me,"Okay, take a deep breath. Wash your face.
And now comes the hardest part:We have to go talk to her parents."At that time, a thousand questions
came to mind,from, "How could a one-month-old
baby be so unfortunate?"to, "Could we have done
something about it?"Before vaccines existed,many infectious diseases
killed millions of people per year.During the 1918 flu pandemic50 million people died.That's greater than Argentina's
current population.Perhaps, the older ones among you
remember the polio epidemicthat occurred in Argentina in 1956.At that time, there was no vaccine
available against polio.People didn't know what to do.
They were going crazy.They would go painting trees
with caustic lime.They'd put little bags of camphorin their children's underwear,
as if that could do something.During the polio epidemic,
thousands of people died.And thousands of people were left
with very significant neurological damage.
I know this because I read about it,because thanks to vaccines,
my generation was luckyto not live through an epidemic
as terrible as this.Vaccines are one of the great successes
of the 20th century's public health.After potable water,they are the interventions
that have most reduced mortality,even more than antibiotics.Vaccines eradicated terrible diseases
such as smallpox from the planetand succeeded in significantly
reducing mortalitydue to other diseases such as measles,whooping cough, polio and many more.All these diseases are considered
vaccine-preventable diseases.What does this mean?That they are potentially preventable,but in order to be so,
something must be done.You need to get vaccinated.I imagine that most,
if not all of us here today,received a vaccine
at some point in our life.
Now, I'm not so sure that many of us knowwhich vaccines or boosters
we should receive after adolescence.Have you ever wondered
who we are protectingwhen we vaccinate?What do I mean by that?Is there any other effect
beyond protecting ourselves?Let me show you something.Imagine for a momentthat we are in a citythat has never had a case
of a particular disease,such as the measles.This would mean that no one in the city
has ever had contact with the disease.No one has natural defenses against,
nor been vaccinated against measles.If one day, a person sick with the measles
appears in this citythe disease won't find much resistanceand will begin spreading
from person to person,and in no time it will disseminate
throughout the community.After a certain timea big part of the population will be ill.
This happened when there were no vaccines.Now, imagine the complete opposite case.We are in a citywhere more than 90 percent
of the populationhas defenses against
the measles, which meansthat they either had the disease,
survived, and developed natural defenses;or that they had been
immunized against measles.If one day,a person sick with the measles
appears in this city,the disease will find much more resistanceand won't be transmitted
that much from person to person.The spread will probably remain containedand a measles outbreak won't happen.I would like you
to pay attention to something.People who are vaccinatedare not only protecting themselves,but by blocking the dissemination
of the diseasewithin the community,they are indirectly protecting
the people in this communitywho are not vaccinated.They create a kind of protective shieldwhich prevents them from
coming in contact with the disease,so that these people are protected.
This indirect protectionthat the unvaccinated people
within a community receivesimply by being surrounded
by vaccinated people,is called herd immunity.Many people in the communitydepend almost exclusively
on this herd immunityto be protected against disease.The unvaccinated people you see
in infographics are not just hypothetical.Those people are our nieces
and nephews, our children,who may be too young
to receive their first shots.They are our parents, our siblings,our acquaintances,who may have a disease,or take medication
that lowers their defenses.There are also people who are
allergic to a particular vaccine.They could even be among us,any of us who got vaccinated,but the vaccine didn't produce
the expected effect,because not all vaccines
are always 100 percent effective.
All these people depend
almost exclusively on herd immunityto be protected against diseases.To achieve this effect of herd immunity,it is necessary that a large percentage
of the population be vaccinated.This percentage is called the threshold.The threshold depends on many variables:It depends on the germ's characteristics,and those of the immune response
that the vaccine generates.But they all have something in common.If the percentage of the population
in a vaccinated communityis below this threshold number,the disease will begin
to spread more freelyand may generate an outbreak
of this disease within the community.Even diseases which were
at some point controlled may reappear.
This is not just a theory.This has happened,
and is still happening.In 1998, a British researcher
published an articlein one of the most important
medical journals,saying that the MMR vaccine,which is given for measles,
mumps and rubella,was associated with autism.This generated an immediate impact.People began to stop getting vaccinated,
and stopped vaccinating their children.And what happened?The number of people vaccinated,in many communities around the world,
fell below this threshold.And there were outbreaks of measles
in many cities in the world --in the U.S., in Europe.
Many people got sick.People died of measles.What happened?This article also generated a huge stir
within the medical community.Dozens of researchers began to assess
if this was actually true.Not only could no one finda causal association between MMR
and autism at the population level,but it was also found that this article
had incorrect claims.Even more, it was fraudulent.It was fraudulent.In fact, the journal publicly retracted
the article in 2010.One of the main concerns and excuses
for not getting vaccinatedare the adverse effects.Vaccines, like other drugs,
can have potential adverse effects.Most are mild and temporary.But the benefits are alwaysgreater
than possible complications.When we are ill,
we want to heal fast.Many of us who are heretake antibiotics
when we have an infection,we take anti-hypertensives
when we have high blood pressure,we take cardiac medications.Why? Because we are sick
and we want to heal fast.And we don't question it much.
Why is it so difficult
to think of preventing diseases,by taking care of ourselves
when we are healthy?We take care of ourselves a lot
when affected by an illness,or in situations of imminent danger.I imagine most of us here,remember the influenza-A pandemicwhich broke out in 2009
in Argentina and worldwide.When the first cases
began to come to light,we, here in Argentina,
were entering the winter season.We knew absolutely nothing.Everything was a mess.People wore masks on the street,
ran into pharmacies to buy alcohol gel.People would line up
in pharmacies to get a vaccine,without even knowing
if it was the right vaccinethat would protect them
against this new virus.We knew absolutely nothing.At that time, in addition to doing
my fellowship at the Infant Foundation,I worked as a home pediatrician
for a prepaid medicine company.
I remember that I started
my shift at 8 a.m.,and by 8, I already had a list
of 50 scheduled visits.It was chaos;
people didn't know what to do.I remember the types of patients
that I was examining.The patients were a little older than
what we were used to seeing in winter,with longer fevers.And I mentioned that
to my fellowship mentor,and he, for his part, had heard
the same from a colleague,about the large number
of pregnant womenand young adultsbeing hospitalized in intensive care,with hard-to-manage clinical profiles.At that time, we set out to understand
what was happening.First thing Monday morning,
we took the carand went to a hospital
in Buenos Aires Province,that served as a referral hospital
for cases of the new influenza virus.We arrived at the hospital;
it was crowded.
All health staff were dressed
in NASA-like bio-safety suits.We all had face masks in our pockets.I, being a hypochondriac,
didn't breathe for two hours.But we could see what was happening.Immediately, we started
reaching out to pediatriciansfrom six hospitals in the city
and in Buenos Aires Province.Our main goal was to find outhow this new virus behaved
in contact with our children,in the shortest time possible.A marathon work.In less than three months,we could see what effect
this new H1N1 virus hadon the 251 children
hospitalized by this virus.We could see which children
got more seriously ill:children under four, especially those
less than one year old;patients with neurological diseases;and young children
with chronic pulmonary diseases.Identifying these at-risk groups
was importantto include them as priority groupsin the recommendations
for getting the influenza vaccine,not only here in Argentina,but also in other countries
which the pandemic not yet reached.
A year later,when a vaccine against the pandemic
H1N1 virus became available,we wanted to see what happened.After a huge vaccination campaignaimed at protecting at-risk groups,these hospitals, with 93 percent
of the at-risk groups vaccinated,had not hospitalized a single patientfor the pandemic H1N1 virus.(Applause)In 2009: 251.In 2010: zero.Vaccination is an act
of individual responsibility,but it has a huge collective impact.If I get vaccinated,
not only am I protecting myself,but I am also protecting others.Sol had whooping cough.Sol was very young,and she hadn't yet received
her first vaccine against whooping cough.I still wonder what would have happenedif everyone around Sol
had been vaccinated.
The milestone event was hosted by Amudim and included 25 private practice clinicians as well as rabbis, educators, therapists, clinical directors, heads of major organizations, social workers, philanthropists and many others who spent two days analyzing these rarely discussed problems and formulating a five point strategy for tackling these complex issues head on.
“This was the first ever conference of this type within the Orthodox Jewish community,” said Zvi Gluck, director of Amudim. “This was a collaborative effort by many people and many organizations and is just the beginning of what will be an all out effort to effect crucial changes to benefit our precious children.”
The statistics for both abuse cases and drug overdoses in the Jewish community are staggering, with dozens of known cases reported since Rosh Hashana and over three dozen deaths of people under age 35 in the Jewish community in that same time period, underscoring the need for serious and immediate intervention. The workshop-based event divided participants into four separate groups, each of which identified both short term goals to help those who have been victimized, as well as possible impediments to those solutions, and devised a set of protocols that would allow them to effectively and practically achieve those objectives. While each of the four groups worked individually, in different rooms, all came up with a set of similar goals which were then boiled down into five distinct strategies: centralizing information and access to resources, creating grass roots efforts to change the status quo, developing evidenced based support services, engaging rabbanim, educators and parents to promote child safety and creating funding strategies. Numerous participants volunteered to begin taking leadership roles in implementing the strategies identified during the two day conference.
“It is incredible to realize that 220 people from different backgrounds in this industry all came up with the same common denominators, making it obvious that we are past the point where there are just one or two people saying there is a problem,” said Gluck. “Change is in the air and the momentum is clearly visible, with people already discussing which areas of this new initiative they plan to be involved in.”
A key component of dramatic change was also put into play at the Amudim conference with the announcement of a $1 million fund to treat abuse victims, created by philanthropists Mendy Klein, Nancy Friedberg and others. The new fund is an initiative of ASAP www.ASAP.careand provides therapy to Orthodox Jewish abuse victims who live in the tri-state area through qualifying non-profit organizations and is hopefully the first of many more programs dedicated to treating abuse in the Jewish community.
“I’m hoping that the people who are here and participated have left here with an increased positive feeling that together everyone can make a difference, that there is support out there for their efforts,” said Mrs. Friedberg. “They are doing the difficult groundwork, but if we work together we can change paradigms.”
Participants were inspired by divrei Torah from Rabbi YY Jacobson, Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein and Rabbi Elya Brudny, rosh yeshiva of the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, who spoke about the impact of saving even one individual. Rabbi Brudny observed that a single Auschwitz survivor could today have well over 200 descendants, highlighting the importance of helping each and every child in need.
“Each one is a bais hamikdash, a world,” said Rabbi Brudny.
It was noted that the simple act of gathering a large number of people who deal with the issues of trauma, risk and abuse for a conference of this nature was an empowering experience that has the potential to be a catalyst for positive change.
“You get the sense of togetherness, the sense of standing at each other’s side and that feeling of support gave us the ability to take what is really a seemingly insurmountable problem and break it down into small, doable pieces, which to me creates a workable reality. “It crystallized our thinking in terms of very specific goals.”
Including a variety people of different backgrounds was one of the keys to the conference’s success, according to Magen Yeladim Child Safety Institute and founder and creator of the Safety Kid program.
“I think the real strength is that this is multi-disciplinary so there seems to be lots of different types of organizations that are all working with the same theme of helping kids,” said Mrs. Fox. “It means that you all learn to work together and you learn what the gaps are, which is very important.”
“It means that additional victims will come out and seek support” . “It means that they feel that they will be empathized with. It means that it will give them strength about not feeling that they were ruined or tainted and they can’t get a shidduch and it will strengthen other people to do this work.”
“I see an amazing movement in moving forward and empowering parents, rabbonim and the community to protect our children,” added Ruchama Clapman, founder and executive director of MASK. “We waited so many years and we’ve seen so many cases over the years, not hundreds, but thousands and we can say are going to be able to, as a result of this conference, get so much help in so many different ways just by us getting together, networking and coming up with special policies which will give support to parents and empower victims to be able to get help, get the therapy they need and be able to then move on to lead healthy lives.”
To find out more about Amudim visit them online at www.amudim.org or contact them at 646-517-0222
No Faith Is Free From Child Abuse Scandals or Cover-Ups
What has been happening in Sydney and Melbourne is doubly shocking. First, there have been revelations over a rabbi who abused children at a yeshivah, Jewish learning seminary over many years, which was then followed by a cover-up when allegations surfaced.
Second, it is a wake-up call to Jewish communities in the UK to be vigilant about a problem from which, until now, we thought we were immune. It was all too easy to think that paedophile ministers were rife in the Church of England and the Catholics, but not really an issue for us.
Almost as disturbing as the crimes are the cover-up by others in the hierarchy, across all faiths, who certainly regard the offender with disapproval but are motivated by fear that if one person is exposed, then that will tarnish the rest of the group - be it the church, synagogue or mosque. In fact, the opposite is true: colluding with a perpetrator is what really tarnishes the group at large, while it also denies justice to the victim, which should have been the prime concern.
What causes such warped responses? Is it the naivety of hoping they could handle the problem and so there was no need to bring in outside authorities; or is it the nervousness of thinking that if one crack was exposed in the faith-group, then the entire edifice would collapse; or is it the hubris of reckoning that on balance the faith-group do more good than evil and so should be excused any failings; or is it that they felt under attack already, battling so many secular enemies, that they could not afford to show any weak spots, especially clerical failings?
There is another big question: but how to keep going despite the child abuses scandals - because actually there are plenty of vicars, priests and rabbis that do not abuse children, but are being stymied because of the suspicion that surrounds every inter-personal action.
It is good practice for classrooms or offices in religious buildings to have windows put into the doors, so that anyone passing by can check that nothing untoward is going on inside. Personally, I always leave my study door open whenever doing one to one interviews, so that there can be no suggestion of any impropriety. But I dislike the implication that being alone with someone is now potentially dangerous for them.
It is certainly been a long time, since I patted a child on the back at the Religion School, lest a gesture of encouragement or warmth be seen as 'touching up'. But I resent having to stop, as it is giving in to a culture of fear, and letting the evil committed by child abusers poison the minds of the overwhelming majority that abhor it.
Yes, we have to be aware of abuse and guard against it, but we also have to protect values such as trust and friendship - be vigilant but also maintain a generosity of spirit - and getting that balance right is difficult for civil society, but is especially problematic for faith groups as a religious approach tries to assume the best in people.
But there is no doubt that religious whistleblowers are to be admired rather than ostracised, as so often happens. The Book of Leviticus does not use that word, but certainly backs the cause: 'You shall not stand idly by wrong-doing...you shall speak out against those who commit evil, otherwise you share in their guilt' (19. 16-17)
The problem is not that we lack religious guidance, but that individuals do not always follow it, and religious institutions sometimes put self-interest above their own principles. What has happened to the Jewish community in Australia is an important warning that none of us can ignore.
Mikveh Pervert Soul-Searching Should Start With Powerful
Now that Rabbi Barry Freundel has pleaded guilty to peeping at 52
women while they went to the mikveh — prosecutors say he spied on 100
more women, but outside the statute of limitations — we finally can take
off the qualifiers and accept that he is guilty. And that means we can
begin some much-needed, and largely absent, soul-searching.
One hopes that it is only the delay in legally establishing Freundel’s guilt that has caused some of his most
ardent supporters (prior to the scandal) to remain so
uncharacteristically silent.
There are, I think, two categories of such people:
those with institutional positions, and those who considered Freundel
their teacher and friend.
Among those in the former category are the Orthodox
rabbinic umbrella organization the Rabbinical Council of America, and
those in leadership positions at Kesher Israel. Here, the discourse is
like that of other scandals: who knew what, when; what could have been
done differently; what policies are being changed.
Because these are familiar dynamics, and because
others have written about them already, they are of secondary interest
to me. Soon after the allegations surfaced, the RCA provided a
(hopefully exhaustive) account of complaints it had received about Freundel.
If that account is complete, it doesn’t amount to much.
To be sure, there are still unanswered questions. It
is rumored that Freundel had several external hard drives filled with
videos of women from the mikveh who are visible in his office at Towson
University.
Is it really plausible that no one ever noticed or asked
about them? Has the RCA really done enough
[[http://www.rabbis.org/index_with_RCA_response%20.cfm]] to protect
women in the conversion process? Really — did no one suspect,
investigate or ask? But at this moment, I’m more interested in the
high-wattage men who regarded Freundel as a friend, teacher and leader.
When I lived in Washington, I attended Kesher Israel
regularly. It was a thrill to sit behind Senator Joseph Lieberman, Leon
Wieseltier and other luminaries of the American Jewish scene. They and
many others took pride in articulating a literate, intelligent Modern
Orthodox Jewish sensibility – and Freundel was an exemplar of it.
And whether or not Freundel really coined the phrase “family values,”,his was also a powerful voice among neoconservatives and moderates.
All this time, he was a sex offender, a fraud and a pervert.
How can some of our community’s leading (if
self-appointed) cultural sages lionize and valorize someone who, in
fact, they didn’t really know that well?
Spiritual leaders are not like
political or business leaders, with private lives sequestered from their
public personae (if that is even true for politicians anymore). They
are meant to walk the walk and talk the talk. Think of those Hasidic
tales where the Hasid wants to learn how the rebbe ties his shoes. Or of
the racier talmudic version,where Rabbi Nachman Kahana hides under Rav’s bed, saying “This, too, is Torah I need to learn.”
That story of rabbinic voyeurism leaves an
uncomfortable taste today, but part of its meaning, I think, is that a
rabbi’s character counts, that the rabbi’s teachings are not confined to
the pulpit, that his entire life is his Torah.
I suppose Freundel was a very good liar. It’s easy to
look at a bad photo of him today (especially one that makes light of
his partial facial paralysis — a cheap shot that editors should be
ashamed of) and see a pervert. But many good people were duped by him,
and, rightly, feel betrayed.
Yet I also wonder what criteria we use to evaluate our spiritual leaders when a serial sex offender can sneak past them.
To me, the Freundel scandal looks a lot like the
Madoff scandal. There are questions that should have been asked,
suspicions that should have been raised. But the self-reinforcing loops
of elite power — X likes him, X is powerful, therefore I should like him
— blinded those entrusted to keep watch.
And then there are the nonsexual allegations. One of Freundel’s victims, Bethany Mandel, told The Daily Beast
that we’ve gotten Freundel wrong. “People keep calling him a pervert
and yes, he’s a pervert, but he’s also a power hungry sociopath,” Mandel
said. “It wasn’t about porn. It was about power, and this was
additional power no one knew he had.”
This, too, should have been visible in plain view to anyone who worked closely with Freundel.
One wonders if the highly self-congratulatory nature
of the D.C. Jewish intelligentsia — which prides itself on saying
important things, generally to other old straight white men — enabled
the
selective blindness that, in turn, enabled Freundel. This small circle
of elites is an echo chamber — one with access to power, but an echo
chamber nonetheless, in which elites anointed other elites. There is
some original thinking in this community, but there’s also a lot of old,
rich, straight, white male bloviating, as the rest of us watched in the
New Republic debacle. There’s more privilege than quality.
Giving erudite speeches about conservative moral
values does not a spiritual hero make. Nor do the layers of posturing
and rhetoric that squat, like painted facades, atop an unknown interior.
Nor does the intoxicating aroma of power that wafts through Kesher
Israel and places like it. It can seem, downing a shot of whiskey with
someone of influence, that you are in the presence of greatness. Really,
you are only in the presence of power.
Yes, Freundel had secrets, but if his followers
really had no inkling of them, they must not have been looking in the
right place.
Jay Michaelson is a contributing editor to the Forward. Contact him on Twitter @jaymichaelson
Rabbis' absolute power: how sex abuse tore apart Australia's Orthodox Jewish community
Yeshivah leaders in Sydney and Melbourne chose to preserve the
prestige of their faith over the safety of children. A national inquiry
that reverberated around the world painted a devastating picture of how
individuals were abandoned and ostracised as they fought to end the code
of silence
Orthodox Judaism
has never been exposed to such scrutiny. From a Melbourne courtroom,
the torment of the Chabad rabbis was streamed live to the world as the
royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
probed the city’s secretive and powerful Yeshivah community.
Sharp divisions in the Jewish world have been exposed. Two rabbis,
including one of the nation’s most prominent, have been forced from
their posts. Whistleblowers, humiliated and ostracised for years by
Yeshivah, have been dramatically vindicated. More victims have come
forward. More criminal charges may follow. Yeshivah schools face a
nightmare of civil litigation.
The cast is Jewish, yet the bones of this story are familiar to
anyone who has followed the scandal of child abuse in Christian schools
and parishes. Rabbis and bishops have shown over the years much the same
failings when faced with a choice between guarding the prestige of
their faiths and the safety of children. This story is about the dangers
in any cult of blind obedience to holy men.
Rabbi Yitzchok Groner died just in time. He was a dominating figure
in Melbourne’s Jewish world, a mountain of a man with inexhaustible
energy, deep religious learning and a stare that stopped grown men in
their tracks.
Rabbi Yitzchok Groner
As the Melbourne emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Groner’s authority was absolute. He spent 50
years building the Yeshivah sect into a wealthy, powerful and very
private community of several hundred families living around a busy
synagogue and thriving schools at a campus on Hotham Street, East St
Kilda.
Yeshivah
is ultra Orthodox: fundamentalist, intellectual and charismatic. God
created the world in six days. Families are big. Sex is never discussed.
Modesty is everything. Men and women mark their days with prayer and
ritual. Instead of dying in the face of the modern world, old-fashioned,
rule-bound Chabad-Lubavitch Judaism flourished.
Groner died in the winter of 2008, but his power didn’t die with him.
To question his authority – indeed his saintliness – after his death,
was considered a particularly grave sin among the Chabad. Protecting his
memory were the rabbis he had trained and sent out into the wider
Jewish world, and the interlocking mesh of Chabad families that seemed
to make everyone at Yeshivah the son-in-law, nephew or sister of
everyone else.
A couple of months after Groner’s death, news broke that David Kramer
had been sentenced to seven years in prison in St Louis, Missouri, for
molesting children at a youth camp where he was supposed to be teaching
“Hot topics for Jewish teens”. The story died in Australia for the time
being, but from this point, a number of Chabad leaders, teachers and
parents knew an appalling scandal threatened Yeshivah.
Kramer had taught at the Yeshivah primary school in late 1989. The
young American rabbi was immediately popular and immediately began
molesting children. The number of his victims is not known, perhaps
dozens, including two of the sons of Zephaniah Waks.
Waks was a most unwise man to cross. The Waks name is all through
this story. Tenacity runs in the family. Half measures aren’t in their
DNA. Their sense of right and wrong is strong and personal. As the
father of 17 children, Zephaniah Waks had more than proved his
dedication to Chabad. But in the end those children would mean more to
him than any obligations to the sect.
Waks discovered the abuse in 1992. He says he complained to the
principal of the Yeshivah school, Rabbi Abraham Glick. Within hours,
Waks learned that Kramer had admitted the abuse. When he wasn’t fired,
Waks says, he confronted Glick again, only to be told: “There is a
danger of self-harm. So we can’t fire him.”
Glick doesn’t deny learning about Kramer at this point, but can’t
recall discussing the teacher’s fate with Waks. He told the royal
commission: “I think he had that conversation or a similar conversation
most probably with someone else.”
Manny Waks and his father Zephaniah leave the county court in Melbourne.Photograph: Mal Fairclough/AAP
Waks was outraged by the failure to act. He didn’t call the police
because at this time he had no doubt that doing so “would be in breach
of the Jewish principle of mesirah”. This ancient rule, still
alive among the followers of many faiths including Judaism, threatens
believers with expulsion if they take crimes within the faith to the
civil authorities.
Waks called a meeting of parents hoping to pressure the school to
sack Kramer. Hours before it was due to begin, he was told Kramer had
been dismissed. What he did not discover until years later was that
Groner had given Kramer an air ticket to Israel, on condition he leave
Australia immediately.
Another threat was looming at Yeshivah in those weeks. Police had
discovered another paedophile active on the campus, a man whose abuse of
Chabad children Groner appears to have known about for nearly a decade.
David Cyprys had been to school at St Kilda and never left. He hung
around Yeshivah in various guises: as a helper at youth camps, security
guard, locksmith and martial arts instructor. He had keys to the ritual
bath, the mikveh, where he abused boys. He abused them in one-on-one kung fu lessons. He abused them at youth camps. He raped them in his van.
The earliest known complaint about Cyprys was in 1984. One victim and
the father of another complained to the head of Chabad Youth. The
father also confronted Groner, who promised to look after the matter and
assured him his son was so young he wouldn’t need counselling. Years
later the father would give evidence that from that time he didn’t hear
another word from Groner.
Complaints about Cyprys kept coming. In 1986 Groner told a
30-year-old mother whose son was being abused: “Oh, no, I thought we
cured him [Cyprys].” She trusted the rabbi’s assurances that all would
now be well. A long time later she discovered the abuse of her son
continued for another two years.
At the start of the summer holidays in late 1990, a scholarship boy
with ambitions to be a rabbi arrived at St Kilda from interstate. He was
15 and very vulnerable. His mother was dying of leukaemia. There was no
father in his life. This lonely kid, known at the royal commission as
AVR, welcomed attention from Cyprys. “I thought he was a really cool
guy,” he said. “He seemed genuinely interested in me.”
Cyprys repeatedly abused the boy for nine months. Found crying one
day in the playground, AVR was taken home by a kindly family. His mother
flew immediately to Melbourne. The boy told her something of the abuse
but couldn’t mention the rapes. “She was quite sick and I thought that
would push her over the edge.”
She rang Groner. AVR remembers them seeing the headmaster, Glick,
next day and also telling him about Cyprys. But Glick would assure the
royal commission he had no memory of the boy at the school at all; no
memory of this exchange with him and his mother; and no knowledge of the
allegations against Cyprys for something like a decade.
AVR was expelled from the school that day. “They did not want me
there any more,” he told the commission. “They did not offer to help me
or provide me with any counselling. From the time of the disclosure, no
one associated with Yeshivah would speak to us or help us. Even our
family members would not help us and we had a lot of trouble getting
back to the airport and getting home.”
AVR and his mother went to the police. The case was looming over the
St Kilda community as Kramer was given his air ticket to Israel. Cyprys
was charged only with indecent assault, for the boy was still unable to
talk about the rapes. Cyprys pleaded guilty in September 1992 and was
fined $1,500. No conviction was recorded. Newspapers carried no reports
of the case. Cyprys returned to his old stamping ground and his old
ways.
‘I was lost in the only world I knew’
The wall of secrecy around the St Kilda community would not be
breached for nearly 20 years. But witnesses told the royal commission
that within the walls Cyprys’s brush with the law was common knowledge
at the time.
Even so, no surviving Chabad leader has admitted knowing in the 1990s
that the man they still trusted to help out at youth camps and give
private kung fu lessons to 12-year-olds, had confessed to sexual
assaults in a Melbourne court. This was despite Yeshivah being, in the
words of Rabbi Glick, “so small that you can’t sneeze without everyone
knowing it”.
The royal commission discovered another peculiarity: not a scrap of
paper survived at the Yeshivah centre recording the allegations against
Kramer, or his flight to Israel, or the multiple complaints against
Cyprys which continued to land on Groner’s desk.
In 1996, Zephaniah Waks was appalled to discover another of his sons
had been abused. Back from Israel for his sister’s wedding, Manny Waks
had heard about Operation Paradox, the hotline for abuse victims run
each year by Victoria police. In the history of combating abuse in many
institutions and many faiths, Operation Paradox was to play an honoured
role.
Manny told his father he had been abused for many years at Yeshivah,
first by the son of a senior Chabad rabbi and then by Cyprys. He
believes the abuse ruined his childhood. It was known in the playground,
and he was mocked for being gay. He became wild and alienated from his
schooling and his family. By the time of his Bar Mitzvah he had come to
loathe the Chabad way of life. “I was lost,” he told the commission, “in
the only world I knew.”
The police were called. Cyprys denied everything.
With the pluck so typical of his family, Manny confronted Groner in
the street and told him of his abuse. “The conversation was a brief
one,” he told the royal commission. “It seemed clear to me that Rabbi
Groner was aware of the circumstances so there was very little I had to
say. He said that Yeshivah was dealing with Cyprys and that I should not
do anything of my own accord.”
Having finished his military service in Israel, Manny brought his
wife home with him to Melbourne in 2000. They lived apart from the
Chabad community but visits to his parents’ house for Sabbath took him
past the Yeshivah centre, where it infuriated him to see Cyprys still on
duty as a security officer
.
“I recall many occasions when our eyes met while I was walking past,”
he told the commission. “He seemed to deliberately smirk at me. Often
he fixed his eyes on me and continued to smirk until I was forced to
look away. To me his facial expression said: ‘We both know what I did,
and I got away with it.’ ”
Once again, the young man confronted Groner. “How can you have this
person here providing him access to children when you know what you
know?” he asked the rabbi. In his evidence to the commission, Waks
recalled Groner pleading with him not to pursue the matter.
“He said that he was taking care of it; Cyprys was getting
professional help and, according to these professionals, was making
improvements. My final question to Rabbi Groner was: ‘Can you assure me
that Cyprys is not currently reoffending or that he will not reoffend in
the future?’ To which Rabbi Groner responded: ‘No’. At this point I
said I had to go, and I left.”
How many complaints Groner received about Cyprys will never be known.
The last the commission examined was particularly heartbreaking. It
came from the mother who first complained to the rabbi in 1986. Her son,
now 30, had just told her his abuse continued for years after her
meeting with Groner.
“You promised me you would take care of the matter and you didn’t and
my son is suicidal,” she told the rabbi on the phone in 2002. According
to the evidence she gave at the royal commission, Groner asked if her
son was planning to go police. “I said: ‘Probably.’ And Rabbi Groner
then said: ‘Well, what do you need me for?’ And I think we both hung up.
I don’t recall who hung up first.”
Her son did go to the police, but his allegations were vague. He was
coming down from years of heavy marijuana use and was, by his own
account, all over the shop. The police case against Cyprys wasn’t closed
but by 2003 it seemed to be getting nowhere.
That was the year Yeshivah says it cut its formal links with Cyprys.
His security licence would say he was still employed there for many
years, but Yeshivah says his services were terminated in 2003, not
because of allegations of abuse, but late bills, illegible invoices and
high prices. He was not shunned in the Orthodox community. On the
contrary: he remained on the board of the Elwood synagogue and in 2006
became a director of the Council of Orthodox Synagogues of Victoria.
Groner was, by this time, very old but his immense authority in the
Chabad community was unchallenged. He had determined that his successor
would be his son-in-law, Zvi Telsner. When Groner died in 2008, honoured
in the secular and religious press, Telsner inherited the post of chief
rabbi.
He could not be sacked or directed or disciplined. He was in charge
because Groner had put him there. His authority depended on the
continued and unquestioned dedication of the sect to the memory of a man
whose achievement would be questioned over the following years in the
most mortifying way.
Not that Telsner, even today, has any doubts about the fundamental
goodness of Rabbi Yitzchok Groner. “His sensitivity to every child was
something which cannot be described,” he told the royal commission. “His
whole life was taking care of children. Anyone who could think that he
would want to harm any child in my estimation would be not only
erroneous but just not acceptable, totally.”
A loathing for the exposure a police investigation might bring
With David Kramer due to be released from his St Louis prison in
2012, someone in Melbourne kept reminding the police about Yeshivah’s
role in spiriting this paedophile out of the country years before.
For the first time, Victorian police began investigating Kramer and
turned to Yeshivah for help. The school provided police with names and
addresses of students at the school in Kramer’s time, and in the middle
of June 2011, Telsner put a brief notice up on the wall of the synagogue
urging parents to co-operate with the investigation.
The Chabad community was in an uncomfortable position. Only months
before, the Orthodox rabbis of Victoria had made it clear that the old
prohibition of mesirah did not apply to child abuse. Jews were
not only free to take allegations of abuse to the police but the
Rabbinical Council of Victoria declared that as a matter of Jewish law
it was “obligatory to make such reports”.
Events would prove the Chabad community deeply divided over this
fresh development. Some simply could not accept the right of the secular
world to interfere in the affairs of the community. Others saw it was
impossible to keep the police out but had little appetite for helping
them. Widely felt in this private world was a loathing for the public
exposure that investigation might bring.
For a time it was not known in the community that one of their own
was helping the police. AVB finished his schooling in St Kilda, but had
grown up in the sister Yeshivah community in Bondi. There as a boy in
the 1980s he was abused by Daniel “Gug” Hayman, a major donor to that
community. But AVB had also been abused by a youth leader who brought a
party of Yeshivah students up from Melbourne, David Cyprys.
Daniel Hayman leaves court in Sydney in June 2014 after pleading guilty to indecent assault.Photograph: AAP
AVB was puzzled by the list of students Yeshivah had given the
police. “My name and address, my brothers’ names and addresses, and the
names and addresses of many of my friends and classmates was not on it.”
So he emailed his contacts within the Melbourne Chabad community,
urging them to encourage and support victims who might be willing to
speak to the police.
“Many in the community have been aware of these allegations for an
extended period of time,” he wrote. “As parents and community members,
we have a duty to confront sexual abuse in our community. Only this way,
can we ensure that it never happens again.” He ended: “Ongoing silence
is NOT an option.”
Retribution was swift. The day after the email went out, Telsner
delivered a fiery sermon reminding his congregation of the false spies
who condemned the people of Israel to wander 40 years in the wilderness.
AVB was not there. He soon heard about it. He assumed, and many in the
community assumed, that Telsner was attacking him.
A few days later, Manny Waks was shocked to read in the Age a story
that began: “Police are trying to breach a wall of secrecy at a private
boys school in St Kilda East over allegations of sex crimes by a former
teacher who is now in jail in the United States.”
The paper’s education editor, Jewel Topsfield, wrote of a community
afraid to speak. One former student told her: “If you are labelled an
informer it gives the family a bad name and makes it hard for children
to get married … the issue is not just about the sexual abuse
investigation, it is about the culture that enables it.”
Waks had his life back under control. At the age of 35 he was
married, working in Canberra and a vice-president of the Executive
Council of Australian Jewry. He rang Topsfield. He knew this could be
very difficult for his family. But he felt he had no choice but to take a
leadership role in bringing this impasse to an end. He detailed
Groner’s failures to act. He identified himself as a victim.
This blew the lid off the story and Chabad’s response was everything
Waks feared. Zephaniah was attacked in the street. He and his father
were denounced around the world in blogs and on Facebook. The terrible
accusation moser – betrayer – was levelled against them.
Documents that emerged at the royal commission suggest the accusation
was also being made in email exchanges between rabbis and at meetings of
the Yeshivah centre’s committee of management.
Zephaniah begged the Chabad leadership for help. He supported his
son. He wanted a statement from them that neither Manny nor his family
was to be blamed for him going public. “I am sick of being smeared,
along with my family,” he wrote. “I attribute a lot of the problem to
Yeshivah’s inaction, or worse, in this matter.”
No protection was offered.
Zephaniah sat in the synagogue as Telsner delivered another slashing
sermon. “Who gave you permission to talk to anyone, which rabbi gave you
permission?” Telsner asked. It was a week after Manny’s revelations in
the Age. Victims must go to the police, said the rabbi, but the
congregation must cease spreading loshen horah – false rumours – that
Yeshivah and his father-in-law had failed to act. Accusations, he said,
should first be brought to him, the rabbi.
Telsner named no names, but Zephaniah Waks had no doubt the rabbi was
attacking his son. He and his wife, supported by a few friends, walked
out of the synagogue. He then made notes of what he had just heard
Telsner preaching: “The rabbis have the power to excommunicate people
when they disobey the rabbis … the worst sin is besmirching the name of
Rabbi Groner.” And: “In the last few weeks, people have argued about who
I meant in my sermons. Now I am saying clearly: if you think it refers
to you, it does. Don’t think it means someone else ... “
Telsner would admit in the witness box of the royal commission that
he delivered this sermon at a time when many members of the Chabad
community were reluctant to talk to the police. He would deny mentioning
his father-in-law. He denied using the word excommunication. Above all,
he denied his sermon was a personal attack on Manny Waks.
Honours previously shown to Zephaniah in the synagogue were
withdrawn. He and the rabbi would sit there side by side for years, but
Telsner never said anything that might reassure Waks that he and his
family were not the target of that attack. “We had a very, shall we say,
cool relationship,” the rabbi told the royal commission. “Therefore I
didn’t think that actually speaking to him would clear up matters.”
As the shunning intensified, AVB and the Waks father and son made
futile appeals to a number of Jewish organisations for support. Years
later, senior Orthodox rabbis would say what AVB and Manny Waks had done
was correct, even admirable. But at the time, none spoke out on their
behalf. There was no one to condemn loshen horah when the targets were
victims of abuse who had defied Chabad’s old code of silence.
The grip of that code still seemed strong in Sydney, where the Bondi
Yeshivah was grappling with its parallel scandal: the failure to act on
old allegations about the activities of Gug Hayman and a rabbinical
student known at the commission as AVL.
One of Hayman’s many friends was the Sydney rabbi Yosef Feldman, son
of Pinchus, the chief rabbi at Bondi, and Pnina, sister of both the
legendary diamond explorer Joe Gutnick and one of the heroes of this
story, Rabbi Moshe Gutnick.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman: ‘This was very wrong of me.’
Yosef emailed colleagues: “I really don’t understand why as soon as something of serious loshen horah is heard about someone of even child molestation should we immediately go to the secular authorities.”
When those emails were leaked to the Australian Jewish News, Feldman
issued a statement that he did, indeed, support the official ruling that
abuse must be reported to the police, and then stepped down as
president of the Rabbinical Council of New South Wales.
He was furious with the paper. After meeting executives of the Jewish
News, Feldman emailed a number of fellow rabbis to explain why the
public attention being given to the troubles in Chabad caused him such
disquiet: “I felt that the hype has been causing phoney attention
seekers to come forward like Manny Waks and this should be stopped.”
Drowning in the witness box as he tried to explain that email,
Feldman assured the commissioners he didn’t doubt Waks had been abused.
“Phoney didn’t mean he’s not a genuine article.” The thing was, he
hadn’t been raped. Before he left the box, the rabbi said: “This was very wrong of me.”
‘There is a tradition ... that you do not assist against Abraham’
Cyprys was charged a mere seven weeks after Waks went to the Age. He
faced 16 counts of indecent assault and 13 counts of gross indecency
involving 12 victims. At his bail hearing, Detective Senior Constable
Lisa Metcher spoke of lies and cover-ups. She accused “high-standing
members of the Jewish community” of protecting the accused paedophile.
Police feared Cyprys’s supporters would help him flee the country.
AVB was there in court. He was seen talking to the police. The
attacks on him in Chabad blogs redoubled. He was accused of lying, of
inventing his abuse, of welcoming his abuse, of setting out to destroy
the Yeshivah community. There were calls for his wife to be burnt as a
witch.
“I was gut wrenched,” he told the royal commission. His boss was
told. He feared losing his job. He heard that Cyprys’s lawyer at the
bail hearing, Alex Lewenberg, was complaining about the help he was
giving police. AVB rang the man and an authorised recording was made of a
conversation in which Lewenberg accused AVB of being a moser.
“I am not exactly delighted,” said the lawyer, “that another Yid
would assist police against an accused no matter whatever he is accused
of. That is the reason why I was very disappointed, because there is a
tradition, if not a religious requirement, that you do not assist
against Abraham.”
The charge list against Cyprys kept growing. He was eventually
committed for trial on 41 charges – including rape – committed between
1982 and 1991. The magistrate took the opportunity to say the claim by
the school’s headmaster, Rabbi Glick, that he had not known sexual abuse
was occurring in his school in the 1980s was “unfathomable”.
Cyprys compelled his victims to give evidence of their rapes before a
jury. He was found guilty of rape and subsequently pleaded guilty to 12
further charges and was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Manny
Waks was granted permission by the court to identify himself as a
victim.
The Australian Jewish News carried a full page ad demanding Glick be
stood down by Yeshivah. It didn’t happen. On advice from senior counsel,
Yeshivah issued a very carefully worded apology: “We understand and
appreciate that there are victims who feel aggrieved and we sincerely
and unreservedly apologise for any historical wrongs that may have
occurred.”
That’s as far as they were willing to go at that point: “May have occurred …”
Kramer was extradited from the US and pleaded guilty in July 2013 to
molesting four boys at Yeshivah back in the early 1990s. He was
sentenced to 18 months in prison. His own lawyer accused the school of
covering up these crimes and helping his client flee the country.
Yeshivah issued an unreserved apology “for not informing the police at
the time the allegations arose”.
The parents of one of Kramer’s American victims alerted to Kramer’s
fate by the Melbourne Herald Sun, were not impressed. They told the
paper: “We arrive at the inescapable conclusion that the blood of our
child . . . rests upon the head of those complicit in Kramer’s escape
from justice.
“We call upon the Yeshivah centre to do the right thing: not by
offering hollow, meaningless platitudes of ‘we’re sorry’, but to take
concrete action by releasing from its employ all who were responsible
for Kramer’s escape from justice.”
Telsner remains the spiritual leader
The witness stand of a royal commission is a cruel place for men of
any faith. Cardinals and preachers are not used to being held to
account. In their world, facts don’t necessarily matter. Belief is
everything. Up against the law, compelled to answer, they find
themselves trapped in daylight.
Over 10 long days of hearings in Melbourne, rabbi after rabbi
apologised for the failings of the Chabad-Lubavitcher communities of St
Kilda and Bondi. Some did so bluntly. Some only when they were cornered
by tough questioning. Only Rabbi Moshe Gutnick seized the opportunity
with gusto.
“I and many of my so-called ultra-Orthodox friends and colleagues
share the outrage as to what has gone on here,” he told the
commissioners. “I believe that the true tenets of Chabad, Judaism and
Orthodoxy require that I and all Jews stand proudly shoulder to shoulder
with, and in absolute full support of, the victims.”
He called those who went to the police heroes. Demands that dealing
with child abuse should be left to rabbis he rejected as “a gross misuse
of rabbinical power”. He condemned mesirah as a mechanism for maintaining control. “You threaten people with mesirah and they become intimidated and they stay underfoot.”
When he left the box, he embraced Manny Waks.
Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant made smooth headway in the witness stand
until almost the end. The most senior rabbi in Australia said all the
right things. His downfall came when he was read a message he had sent
while watching online as Zephaniah Waks gave evidence a few days
earlier.
“Zephaniah is killing us,” he messaged the editor of the Australian
Jewish News. “Zephaniah is attacking Chabad. He is a lunatic on the
fringe, guilty of neglect of his own children. Where was he when all
this was happening?”
Pnina FeldmanPhotograph: AAP
Kluwgant resigned three days later as president of the Organisation
of Rabbis of Australasia. He is also no longer chaplain to the Victorian
police.
Gutnick’s nephew, Yosef Feldman, made such a hash of his appearance
in the witness box that he lost yet another post. At one point he said
he didn’t “have a clue” if an adult touching a child’s genitals might be
a crime. His attempts to square the old prerogatives of the rabbis with
modern demands for reporting to police were condemned by the Executive
Council of Australian Jewry as repugnant. He resigned next day as a
director of Yeshivah Sydney.
Feldman’s mother, Pnina, emailed Manny Waks last October: “Why do you
keep highlighting Yeshiva?! … You need counselling! I haven’t met a
person yet with one nice word to say about you. Most people consider you
a lowlife – not because of any molestation, which wasn’t your fault,
but because of your malicious blame game, which is unjust, unwarranted,
undeserved and wicked.” She was not called to the commission to give
evidence.
This week, Rabbi Glick resigned from his positions at Yeshivah
College. He told the Age he felt the victims would want him to break all
his links with his old school. “That’s where the abuse took place and
it was under my leadership. I haven’t taken this lightly.”
But Zvi Telsner is still the spiritual leader of Melbourne’s Chabad
community in St Kilda despite calls from many quarters in the Jewish
community that he resign. To the end, he manfully claimed those famous
sermons were not attacks on AVB and Manny Waks. It was all a
misapprehension. Yes, he could have corrected that any time in the past
three years in a heartbeat. No, he didn’t. For that failure and for any
pain it caused, he wished to apologise.
Counsel for the Waks family, Melinda Richards, finished her withering
examination of Telsner with a long question: “Rabbi, if the evidence of
Zephaniah Waks and AVB is accepted in relation to the shunning, even if
you didn’t do the shunning but you stood by whilst it was occurring, do
you accept that you were complicit in the process of shunning that was
undertaken by other members of your community?” Telsner replied: “I do.”
AVB remains, despite everything, a member of Telsner’s St Kilda community. He holds to his faith. He will not be budged.
Alex Lewenberg is practising law in Melbourne. The legal services
commissioner, Michael McGarvie, will not comment on any disciplinary
proceedings a lawyer may or may not be facing. He told Guardian
Australia: “It is impermissible for lawyers to intimidate witnesses.
That goes to the heart of the justice system and the role a lawyer plays
as an officer of the court.”
Zephaniah Waks has broken with Chabad, trimmed his beard and put the
St Kilda family home on the market. But how many Melbourne families need
a house with 13 bedrooms and six kitchens? The target market is
Yeshivah, directly over the road. They aren’t buying. Zephaniah and his
wife are dividing their time between Israel and Australia, living
outside the sect that was their shelter, their world for most of their
lives.
Once the hearings were done, Manny Waks flew to his new home in
France. “If it was up to my wife,” he told the commissioners as he
fought his tears, “we would have left a long time ago.” Before he flew
out he met, at their invitation, five of Rabbi Groner’s children who
wished to apologise to him for the abuse and the cover-ups in their
father’s time at Yeshivah.
That last meeting capped a fortnight of remarkable victories that
have left Waks feeling profoundly vindicated. But he does not believe
the saga is over. He is calling for the complete renewal of the
leadership of Yeshivah in St Kilda and Bondi – starting with Telsner:
“For the pain and suffering he has caused to so many people over the
years he must resign. He has brought the entire Jewish community into
disrepute.”
And Waks is still waiting for an apology from the peak Jewish bodies
which did not stand up for him and the other victims. “They must
apologise not just for the abuse, not just for the cover-ups. They left
us out to dry.”
